Improving Livelihoods of Farm Households in Peanut Based Farming Systems in East Africa

Approach

The goals of this project were to improve data collection by establishing standardized procedures for data collection and documentation. The hope was to analyze potential increases to household income through increased peanut production. The project would examine impact of peanut farming systems, including value added activities on resource use and income generation. In cooperation with host country collaborators, the project would develop appropriate training materials and conduct workshops, with particular focus on women.

Achievements

The objective of this project was to improve the likelihood that households will be successful in using the technologies of peanut-based farming systems in East Africa, Uganda and Kenya. The challenges include instituting ways to bring research developments, via training and technology transfer, for better farming practices to conserve soil fertility, promoting advances for increased yields, adding value by improving quality to enhance market expansion, and in doing so, raising peanut output because of increased demand and strengthening participation by women in agricultural programs of the farming communities. Training workshops and application of surveys to gather baseline data on farm practice were valuable to train host country participants in interviews and survey analyses. The U.S. and HC principal investigators have gained greater insight into working with colleagues/teams and communities in both Kenya and Uganda. There have been lessons learned on the implementation of peanut farming systems in both locations, which will benefit expanding efforts in Uganda and Kenya and other geographical locations. For example, a training session was held in Kenya entitled: “Enterprise budgeting, whole-farm budgeting, cost of production estimation, and breakeven and profitability analysis”, which trained participants from the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture. A similar activity was held in Uganda on “The Analysis of Cost and Profits for Farm Enterprises”. A session on groundnuts/peanuts was organized by the project at the 12th KARI Biennial Scientific Conference in Nairobi. This has resulted in showing the importance of human capacity development, which will have long-term impact of Institute and Ministry personnel to help improve farm enterprise development and profits.